Online collaborative learning gives employees the chance to interact with each other, learn from each other’s projects, absorb and reflect upon new ideas, ask questions and receive answers from both peers and subject matter experts, and progress.

VR creates a space where leaders can practice common leadership skills, including giving performance evaluations, delivering bad news and dealing with difficult employees, among many others, privately and without risk.

With an increasing number of organizations experiencing slow growth, greater pressure on resources and margins, and a silo mentality and less-than-ideal ways of working, it is more important than ever to invest in “commercial people skills.”

We all might know soft skills are important, and our instincts are telling us they can have a profound impact on the bottom line, but without research, we can’t actually prove it and show how great the impact is.

Digital learning and emerging technologies are offering new tools to teach soft skills in powerful ways; gamification, virtual and augmented reality, and simulations are just a few. These trends are worth exploring.